Keep Calm, and Drink your Boba

To Just Play, Not Just School

To play simply means to get out of our comfort zone and go outside to try new things and just have fun. To play is to do things such as jumping rope, dealing cards, starting a board game, and everyone’s favorite: Jenga. To play also applies to non-academic fun zone and it’s more about interacting with other people, increase one’s social ability to communicate and enhance self-control of life and decision making. That’s what I learned from Peter Grey as he talked about the pros and cons of playing outside through his topic “The Decline of Play”. What I’ve come to realize is that what he said was true. There had been a decline in play due to the fear adults instilled in children about kidnappings and other terrible things through media and also because of schooling, how homework in this generation had multiplied by a lot for elementary school children in compared back then during Peter’s time in the 1950s. I love how he proposed that there should be less schooling and that there should be parks that are supervised by adults to guarantee safety for kids. And I believe so too. He’s not wrong there. If I could further support that, Finland has elementary schools that give out less homework to kids and devote the majority of their time to playing outside instead of being in the classroom for four hours. And Finland has a number one rank in education from other 56 countries, and sure as heck America is nowhere near there. But I guess my point is that there should be times when students are allowed to play and do nothing else academic even just for forty-five minutes. We did this experiment with our English classes and I got to interact more with my friends and just play cards and even got to play new games with just cards when I thought I wasn’t able to learn it. And it felt really nice having to just play and not think about writing essays, AP tests, assessments, vocabulary, etc. I saw what Peter meant and it should be applicable not only to elementary students but also high schoolers. Old style though so no electronics or whatsoever. If anything, I’d say the activity was definitely worth of my time.